Media coverage
Deutsche Welle (Urdu) · 2015-09-30
DW Urdu on rising suicides in Gaza. The economist Omar Shaban attributes them to depression in a place of constant loss, oppression, violence, militancy and fear of explosions.
Gaza is a besieged territory. The Islamic organization Hamas is in power here, while the external borders of this area are under strict surveillance by the Israeli army. In this situation, the residents of Gaza have fallen victim to severe psychological problems and stress. One example is Muammar Qadeer. Qadeer was about to be married, but life in the Gaza Strip has nowadays become so difficult that he could not bear the pressure and made an unsuccessful attempt to take his own life. This twenty-one-year-old Palestinian youth swallowed rat poison. He says, “All doors had been closed to me. The police would arrest me every few days, and my fruit cart would also be shut down. My income had also become extremely low.”
In Gaza, official statistics regarding suicides are not available, and the police deny such reports. However, a member of the security apparatus, on condition of anonymity, told AFP that the situation has become extremely alarming and that nearly two or three such incidents occur every day. Doctors have also described the tendency among many patients brought to hospitals to ingest poisonous substances as dangerous.
Thirty-year-old Mohammed Abu Assi is also among the few people who spent several days in a coma after ingesting poison. According to thirty-year-old Assi, “I do not have enough money to take care of my children, so I thought that rather than watching them cry before my eyes, it would be better to die.”
From 2008 until now, three wars have also taken place between Hamas and Israel. Gaza’s population is 1.8 million, and it is an extremely densely populated area. Access to water and electricity is quite limited, and the unemployment rate is 42 percent. Sixty percent of young people are unemployed, while 39 percent of the population is forced to live below the poverty line. According to the United Nations, Gaza will not be fit for living within the next five years. According to a recent survey, 52 percent of Gaza’s population wants to emigrate, but because the borders are closed, they cannot do so.
Economist Omar Shaban maintains that the cause of suicide in Gaza is “depression” or psychological stress. He says that it has become a place for the public where they are continuously subjected to harm, they face oppression at all times, there is violence and militancy in the area, and they live under the constant fear of explosions.
Text © Deutsche Welle (Urdu) — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source